N. Hartford bookkeeper pushed for extra compensation

The fact that Town Bookkeeper Carol Fairbrother quietly filed for pension payments three years ago isn’t the only thing that has brought her extra cash — and extra scrutiny.

Elizabeth Cooper

The fact that Town Bookkeeper Carol Fairbrother quietly filed for pension payments three years ago isn’t the only thing that has brought her extra cash — and extra scrutiny.

She received a lump sum payment of $71,544 in back overtime payments in 2008 -- despite a Town Board resolution in 1999 stating that she was not entitled to overtime pay.

Fairbrother only got the overtime payment after pushing two successive town supervisors to be paid for additional hours worked, an O-D review of the situation found.

It wasn’t until 2008, however — during the administration of then-Supervisor Earle Reed — that she finally got her wish.

Now, the local watchdog group Concerned Citizens for Honest & Open Government has filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court alleging that the overtime payment was improper.

“Taxpayers should be outraged and demand greater accountability from their elected officials and the people they in turn hire to run the day to day operations of the town,” Concerned Citizens co-founder Catherine Lawrence said in an interview about Fairbrother’s back overtime.

Fairbrother has been in the news recently after revelations that in 2007 she began collecting pension payments without formally retiring from the town, as required by law.

That back overtime payment in 2008 subsequently boosted Fairbrother’s pension by 29 percent, the O-D reported last week.

This year, Fairbrother is set to collect a pension of $42,696 in addition to her $58,714 salary.

Fairbrother and town Supervisor Patrick Tyksinski have both declined to comment on the overtime issue, citing the citizens’ group’s lawsuit.

How all began

Fairbrother was hired by the town as bookkeeper on Jan. 9, 1984.

She served in that position and was able to collect overtime until 1999, when she was given the additional responsibility of dealing with town payroll. At that time, she received a 25 percent raise — from $31,936 to $40,000.

The June 10, 1999, Town Board resolution enacting those changes also states that she would no longer be eligible for overtime pay.

In February 2008, town Personnel Officer Barbara Aiello took on the payroll responsibilities. Fairbrother’s pay, however, was not downgraded.

By that year, Fairbrother’s annual pay was budgeted at $56,999, town records show.

Exempt or not?

Also in 2008, the town got an opinion from an outside lawyer stating that Fairbrother should be paid for overtime.

“It is my opinion that Ms. Fairbrother is a non-exempt employee of the town and is entitled to overtime pay,” attorney Michael Sciotti of Syracuse-based Hancock & Estabrook stated in his July 3, 2008, opinion.

People in positions characterized as exempt do not have to take civil service exams. In many cases, but not all, exempt employees are not paid overtime.

But the issue remains murky.

The Oneida County Personnel Department, which oversees civil service issues for many municipalities in the county, has the New Hartford booker’s job listed as exempt.

As such, the job is subject to appointment by the town supervisor, and is not subject to civil service tests, the county said.

Whether the individual in that job is paid for overtime is up to the town, however, county personnel officials told the O-D.

One way or the other, the town opted to pay Fairbrother for overtime hours worked from 2002 through 2007.

The $71,544 payment was approved by the Town Board at its Dec. 10 2008, meeting.

“That employee should have been paid and compensated and this should not have dragged out this long,” then-town board member Robert Payne told the O-D at the time. “We are just making sure we corrected a wrong.”

Reed did not return calls for this story.

‘A good salary’

Former town Supervisor Ralph Humphreys, who served from 2002 through 2005, said Fairbrother had approached him about getting paid overtime, but he refused because she had been given a raise in 1999 to oversee the payroll.

“She came to me and complained,” he said. “I offered to take the pay away from her as well as the job, which was only fair, and she couldn’t get out of my office fast enough.”

He said he didn’t think it was right for the Reed administration to give her the back overtime pay.

“She was getting a good salary and she agreed to do it,” he said.

Former Town Supervisor William Keiser, who served from 1998 through 2001, said the issue is a complex one.

When the 1999 resolution giving Fairbrother the payroll responsibilities and blocking her from getting overtime pay was passed, the town financial operations were handled differently than it would be subsequently, he said.

When he took office, he had hired Tyksinski as town comptroller and Fairbrother worked under him. They also had an administrative assistant, he said.

He also installed a new computer system to facilitate the town’s financial operations, he said.

But when Humphreys took office a few years later, Tyksinski was let go and Fairbrother had much more responsibility, Keiser said.

“Carol is a real workhorse, we always had a good rapport and her job performance was wonderful,” he said. “After I left office, she had no one to report to other than the town supervisor.”

Still, he said, he disagreed with the decision to give her the accumulated back overtime in 2008.

“You don’t get paid over five or six years,” he said. “It’s a financial no-no.”

The lawsuit

The Concerned Citizens’’ lawsuit alleges that Fairbrother was given the back overtime pay because she knew something that town officials including Reed, then-town attorney Gerald Green and then-deputy Supervisor David Reynolds didn’t want made public.

“With the intent to defraud the town’s taxpayers, the town attorney, the town supervisor and Mr. Reynolds actively sought to circumvent well established regulations to pay out the unlawful overtime to the town bookkeeper, that the town bookkeeper also knew she was ineligible to receive,” the lawsuit claims.

Neither Reed nor Green returned calls for this story. Reynolds declined to comment.

The lawsuit seeks between $3 million and $10 million in compensatory and punitive damages to be given to the town.

It names the town, Reed, Green, Reynolds and Fairbrother as defendants and seeks that they never be allowed to hold any public office in the state.

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